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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23258212">so take me to the paradise, it's in your eyes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/happypuppys/pseuds/happypuppys'>happypuppys</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>1917 (Movie 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, literally they love each other</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 05:55:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,221</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23258212</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/happypuppys/pseuds/happypuppys</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The grass is wet beneath his feet. </p><p>Joseph is still staring at him, in horror or sadness, he can’t tell. But he can’t tear his eyes away from him, it seems, and when he speaks, nothing comes out. His mouth is dry, his knees weak, but his eyes are locked onto Joseph, as if nothing else matters in the world. The sky is bright, but inside he feels so cold.</p><p>or, </p><p>William Schofield passes out twice, which is a shame since he's got some great news in front of him</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joseph Blake &amp; William Schofield, Tom Blake &amp; William Schofield, Tom Blake/William Schofield</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>107</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>so take me to the paradise, it's in your eyes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>ok hi!! i literally watched this movie a day and a half ago and im in love with these two so i decided fuck canon i make my own things (i say while staring at my skateboarder!tom au)</p><p>literally u get to blame my friend tyler for this (hi tyler ily) bc i was gonna have the more soft, fluffy fic out first but i wanted to make him suffer first</p><p>also!! title is from american money by børns</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The grass is wet beneath his feet. </p><p>Joseph is still staring at him, in horror or sadness, he can’t tell. But he can’t tear his eyes away from him, it seems, and when he speaks, nothing comes out. His mouth is dry, his knees weak, but his eyes are locked onto Joseph, as if nothing else matters in the world. The sky is bright, but inside he feels so cold.</p><p>“Huh?” William tries to say, stepping forward, but he drops to his knees, and nothing comes out.  The grass is soaked, and something wet touches his neck. Joseph kneels down in front of him as he touches his head, and when he brings it back, his hand is red. It’s dark, as if it’s been on his hand all this time, but bright as well.</p><p>He stares at it, and he can see Joseph rushing and standing up out of the corner of his eye. He can hear him shout something, but he doesn’t know what it is, the noise traveling in the air, but not registering. Before he can think about how bad that is, how badly he needs to see a doctor or nurse or <em> something </em>, his eyes roll to the back of his head, and he passes out.</p><p>--</p><p>When he wakes up, it’s to the sound of two men talking, and someone gripping his shirt. He’s realized one of them is Joseph before he’s even opened his eyes, but when he does, he’s shocked to see the man’s red eyes. He tries to speak, tries to tell him he’s sorry, but he can’t get a word out before Joseph speaks.</p><p>“Tom’s alive.” Joseph smiles at him, eyes watering again. “He’s not dead! He’s really alive, back up in one of the private medical tents.”</p><p>All William can do is stare. He can feel tears prick the sides of his eyes, but he ignores it, reaching up to grab Joseph’s hand. “How?”</p><p>“Those men that had the truck? Captain Smith and his men? They went back after you crossed the water, deciding they couldn’t leave a dead man where they had pissed. So, they got him into the truck, and rushed to the Aid Post, who found out his name and sent him over here.” He grinned softly at William, leaning in to hug him as the man started to cry, hard.</p><p>“That bastard.” He said, wiping his eyes with his hands. “When I see him…” He trails off, not even knowing how he’ll finish the sentence. What will he do? Punch him for doing that to him? Hugging him? Kissing him? </p><p>“Don’t worry, alright?” Joseph smiles. “I’ve managed to get you and him your own private tent, so you can cry as much as you want when you see him. But that’s later, once you’re alone, alright? Now we need to get you to the tent.”</p><p>“Thank you.” He says, staring at Joseph. “You’ve done so much for me, and you don’t even know me.”</p><p>“All I needed to know is that you’re the man who Tom tells me is his best friend.” He claps him on the shoulder, moving to the side as William does his best to get off the cot on his own.</p><p>He follows Joseph, mouth repeating those two words as he stares ahead of him, feet only following what Joseph does.</p><p>
  <em> best friend </em>
</p><p>Will it be horrible if he admits he never thought of Tom as a best friend until that moment? Will it be horrible if he admits why? That he never thought of him as best friend because he had a crush, and he thought that Blake would never think of him as more than barely a friend if he knew that? Because Schofield always told him to be quiet, he never thought Blake even liked him all that much.</p><p>He doesn’t know. (Or maybe he does, and he’s just lying to himself.)</p><p>It’s April, and the sun is out overhead, with the temperature being in the high 70s, but amidst all of those things, he still shivers. It’s clearly warm, he can tell by the fact his clothes are becoming hot, but still he shivers, wrapping his arms around himself, and if Joseph looks back and notices, he doesn’t say a word.</p><p>They don’t stop walking, and it’s just his luck that they’re only a minute away from where Tom is, and he can even see the tent, that his legs fail their next step and he falls. They’re on grass, and so it shouldn’t be bad (he should be fine), except he feels something enter his body and he gasps, breathing heavy. </p><p>“Shit.” He hears Joseph curse, and he tries to get back up, to not be a burden (this is his second battle, goddammit), when he feels the blood from his head drip, and it perfectly matches the liquid that’s slowly coming through his shirt. “Shit!” His hand moves to his stomach, and when he pulls it back, it’s almost bright red, coating his entire hand.</p><p>Joseph pulls him up, and they stumble towards the tent, rushing. There’s two doctors, he can see clear as day, and one turns around like he’s going to greet them and tell them everything they need to know about Tom, but the blood stain on William’s jacket must be bigger than he thought because the doctor immediately starts moving, taking everything off of the cot. He can hear some clanging and a panicked shout and someone’s voice, asking what’s wrong.</p><p>They get to tent as fast as possible, but the blood’s coated their hands, and William can’t see where the blood ends and everything else begins. He almost falls onto the cot, the pain taking over every other sense.</p><p>“Sco?” He hears a faint voice say, and he knows it’s Tom, down to the quiet way he’s talking, but he can’t turn and look, because the doctor’s moved in, cleaning the wound, and it’s taking all of his willpower to not make a noise. All he can do is grip the sides of the cot and clench his teeth, his knuckles turning white.</p><p>“You’re gonna be alright, okay?” Joseph says, and he’s trying to focus on his words, to ignore the pain spreading through his body, but he hisses when the doctor presses down, breathing heavily. “You can’t die from a little stab wound. If Tom can survive one, then you can do it too.”</p><p>William tries to say sorry, tries to say he’s sorry he’s being forced to deal with him when he should just be worrying over his brother, but the doctor presses down even harder, and a moan of pain comes out, and then he’s gone.</p><p>--</p><p>He wakes up at what seems to be night, judging by the fact that the sky is dark and that he can faintly hear snoring. He’s also been moved, a  fact he can see, by how Tom is in the cot next to him and that Joseph is asleep in the floor between them, using his arms as a pillow. Fuck, Tom. It’s been a whole day since everything’s happened, but his heart still clenches at the sight of him.</p><p>He would chuckle at the sight of Joseph in the floor, but the exhaustion from the past two days have caught up to him , making his body feel like it’s hard to do anything other than turn one way or another. He can barely turn his head to look at Tom.</p><p><em> Tom </em> . The boy who he thought to be dead up until a few hours ago. The one who he’s cried over, had nightmares over. The one who he loves. The one who had <em> died </em>. (Apparently not.)</p><p>He turns back over, facing the curtain at the side of his bed like it would let him forget everything, let him leave the war and never return. That’s what he wishes, truly. To forget all this horror and never return. That’s what everyone wants, right? To forget everything. Act like they never came here in the first place, and never remember anything.</p><p>Except, there is one thing he wants to remember. His eyes find Tom’s face again, still pale, but the color’s slowly returning, as if he never got stabbed in the first place. He was the best thing to come out of this whole situation. A friend (best friend?) was probably the worst thing to have in war, but he’s glad he has one.  Especially since it’s Tom.</p><p>A small breeze moves through the camp, and he shivers when it hits him, clutching his small, thin blanket even tighter. He tries not to move, so he won’t hurt himself even further, but he accidentally hits his head on the side of the cot. It takes all that he has in him to not make any loud noise, but he moans in pain, eyes closed.</p><p>He doesn’t move again for a while, other than to put his head back on the pillow. It’s hard to do so, and it’s pathetic when he grunts with the movement. He’s fought battles and not made a sound, but now here he is, struggling to move his head five inches. If only his mum could see him, just to laugh and say she told him so.</p><p>He lightly shakes his head, clenching his eyes shut and ridding his mind of those thoughts. He doesn’t need to think about her, or any of those things right now. He’s just survived a mission no one thought he could do, and found his best friend’s brother and him. He’s done everything he needs to. He doesn’t need to think about anything else.</p><p>He turns slowly, staring back up at the top of the tent. He wishes all of this was over, that he was home alone, laying in his bed with a book and a cup of tea, wondering what he was going to do tomorrow. Instead, he’s in a cot with blood stained bandages and wounds that each have their own story, with a headache that’ll probably last for a few days if Blake has anything to say about it.</p><p>He sighs, and it’s maybe a bit too loud, because Tom moves in his cot, and he freezes, hoping the boy won’t wake up. He doesn’t, only settles and breathes out. He smiles, grateful he didn’t wake up, until he moves again and slams his left hand against the side, his palm hitting it hard, causing him to gasp in pain. Tom shifts again, and he hopes he won’t wake up, hopes he won’t see his face scrunched up in pain and ready to cry at the sight of him, but the boy wakes up, against his wishes. He turns over to look at Will, smiling before his face changes to a look of concern.</p><p>“Is your hand okay, Sco?” He asks, and Will can’t help but nod, even though his hand is telling him that it is definitely not. “Thank god, because I don’t think my heart would’ve been able to take seeing you hurt again. But, I’m still surprised you’re here!” He grins and all Will can do is nod, still tired from the journey (not to mention from the fact he’s only slept the last few nights because he fell unconscious from a reason that wasn’t his fault) from the previous days. “I honestly can’t believe that you’re here, right in front of me. I knew you would make it here, since you’re way stronger and better than I could ever be, but I thought I’d never see you again when we were out in front of the farmhouse.”</p><p>“I thought I’d never see you too.” Will says softly, and Tom quiets, shooting him a soft grin.</p><p>“I guess we were both wrong, huh?” He grins, before starting again, launching into a story he heard from one of the other soldiers about a hero who traveled across all the land to stop him from fighting. He didn’t stop, continuing to tell the tale, until Will’s eyes had closed. “Sco?”</p><p>“Hmm?” Will hummed, opening his eyes to see Tom slinging his arm out. Clearly, it was so Will could reach out and grab his hand, but his mind was so fuzzy he just stared at Tom.</p><p>“Will you hold my hand?” Tom says after a moment, strangely quiet (different from the quiet when they laid by the tree together) and Will puts his arm out, grabbing a hold of his hand. It was just such a Tom thing he didn’t think he would’ve been able to refuse, even if he tried.</p><p>He wasn’t going to tell him (not him and not anyone else) that the hand-holding comforted him, and it made him feel like the nightmares in his head were less scary. He smiled back over at Tom, a strange sight that Tom must’ve still not been used to, because he stared back at him with a soft smile for a moment, before starting another tale he heard.</p><p>Tom must’ve known what Will needed, because he never stopped talking, not even when his eyes closed or his breathing slowed, because he must’ve known this was keeping the nightmares at bay. He must’ve, because no matter how much Will protested when they met, they were best friends, in and out.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank you for reading this!! im literally in love with these two (three if you count joseph) so if anyone wants to talk to me about these (or mayhaps ideas, requests, or headcanons oop) i have a tumblr!! it's @willlamschofield so im open to talking about them!!</p><p>i might be writing a skateboard!tom au though so maybe be on the lookout?</p><p>ok thank you bye!!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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